Lane Finds and an emotional plea.

I have an episode of Lane Finds for you. It's the 16th one and I am truly getting exhausted. If you follow my feed you will see a post from the Downtown Eastside asking for donations of clothing and pet food.

The situation is dire so if you can donate, please do. Just go there directly, they are looking for any kind of warm, clean clothing. Pick one and just go and give.

My regular pick-up went on vacation for almost two months and I had so many bags to donate in my apartment I really got disheartened with the whole project. People have the way and means to get these donations to the people who need them. I do not have a car and I am physically lugging all of this back to my apartment, washing it (lugging it up and down 3 flights of stairs and paying $2.50 a load to wash and $2.25 to dry). I then bag it and get it ready for Gloria to pick up and she takes it to her garage and sorts it for the many places who either pick it up from here or she drops it directly to.

This is truly a labour of love.

The downtown East Side needs help and everyone is pledging to help in some way or somehow on social media. This is one way you can get involved, donate a bag to a shelter of good clean usable clothing that you are not using anymore. DO NOT THROW YOUR OLD CLOTHING AWAY.

I literally grabbed an armful from a lady who was just about to throw it into the bin last week.

I know she thought I was crazy and I don’t give a shit. Why throw out perfectly good clothing?

I am not talking about donating to Value Village - they are a for-profit company and are not doing anything to help the DTES please dispel this myth, If you don’t believe me please do some research and you will find what you need to know what they actually are and who they are currently supporting.

Want to buy something for them - they need socks, underwear and toiletries to get by.

Each day there are ‘sweeps’ at 8 am, the city is taking everything from people who are sleeping on the street and leaving them with nothing, rain, shine, cold or hot it’s constant.

Lane Finds EPS 16